Carmen Amaya
Who is Carmen Amaya?
Carmen Amaya Amaya was born on November 2, 1913 in the marginal Somorrostro neighborhood, by the sea in Barcelona, daughter of the guitarist El Chino and niece of the cantaora La Faraona. She began dancing as a child alongside her father in the neighborhood’s taverns and made her professional debut at six, at the Las Siete Puertas restaurant in Barcelona, where she soon came to be known as “La Capitana”.
Career
She traveled to Madrid for the first time in 1923 and debuted in Paris around 1929, at the Palace Theater. The Civil War forced her into exile: she reached Buenos Aires in December 1936, and her debut there caused such a stir that police and firefighters were needed to control the box office crowds. She then toured Latin America between 1937 and 1940, debuted in New York in 1941 —where she even performed at Carnegie Hall— and from 1942 also settled into the Hollywood scene. Her film career included titles such as “La hija de Juan Simón”, “María de la O” and, in 1963, “Los Tarantos”.
President Roosevelt invited her to the White House and gave her a bolero jacket studded with diamonds, one of the most memorable episodes of her time in the United States. She married the guitarist Juan Antonio Agüero, who accompanied her through much of her artistic career.
Style
Her dancing, of extreme speed and nerve, with arm movements and footwork that critics described as of “violent impetuosity”, broke with the traditional feminine aesthetic of the dance, to the point that she performed dressed as a man and went on to popularize the taranto as a dance form.
Legacy
She died on November 19, 1963 in Begur, Girona, from kidney disease; the town had granted her honorary citizenship. She received the Medalla al Mérito Turístico de Barcelona and the Orden de Isabel la Católica, and today a monument in Montjuïc Park honors the artist who forever changed the way flamenco dance is understood.